How Hotmart started a recruitment process to hire its first 250 employees

Currently, six years later, we count on more than 250 Troopers (as we call our employees) around the world, ensuring the quality and the success of everything we deliver our clients!

If you know and follow our story, you must know Hotmart came up as a start-up in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Founded by two Computer Scientists, João Pedro and Mateus, today, we’re the biggest Company in Latin America exploring the market of selling and distribution of digital products.

We are extremely proud of that! Nevertheless, to get this far, our team got through many stages until it consolidated in what it is today.

When the Company was nothing but an embryo, all the roles that exist today were planned and executed by our Founders. From coding to customer support, João and Mateus unfolded themselves in many to complete all the tasks and ensure the business grew stronger. And after they secured their first investment, they faced the need to look for new members of the team.

Recruitment part 1: Crazy Friends

Scenario:

The Company had its first meaningful deliveries. Yet, it wasn’t recognized in the market. Nothing more natural than calling that one friend you know goes to the end of the world with you while providing you with quality work!

That’s exactly what our Founders did! And that’s how they hired Hotmart’s first employees.

Recruitment part 2: Clone attack

Now with a few friends working at the Company, one Trooper called the Founders attention, especially for her professionalism and behavior when performing her job.

They were so happy of having hired her and they wanted to be possible to clone her, so there were more people like this Trooper in other areas of the Company that already required more hirings!

Faster than never, the Founders based themselves in a profiler mapping test used back them, to compare this model Trooper with other candidates they were interviewing. And, for a long time, this was the way they ensured a nice hire! ;)

Recruitment part 3: Scorpion’s Hook

At this point, now with a team put together, our Founders started to receive several recommendations from their own Troopers!

The most interesting is that people only recommended co-workers when they truly understood that person would fit inside Hotmart’s culture and when the person they were recommending was exceptional in their area, who would definitely share their knowledge with Troopers who already worked there.

At this stage, recommendations happened due to admiration, and that made all the difference, right? Because who doesn’t want to work with people they admire?

In their majority, recommendations were assertive and they became the main methodology used at Hotmart to attract Talents.

Recruitment part 4: The rise of the Talents Team

In mid-2015, growing as fast as never before, our Founders saw themselves with their schedule more and more fulfilled and, so their Talents continued to get the attention they deserved, Hotmart’s Talent’s department was created!

On this team, we have today Troopers able to attract, select, develop, and retain the best talents! Therefore, currently, a sub-team at Talents, Attractions & Recruitment has the mission to search the market, in various ways, for suitable people to fulfill each open position in the Company.

And why does every story of the different phases Hotmart’s recruitment process had, make sense at this time? Simply because, with what our Founders put together, we also learned a lot! And from there we came up with some stepping stones for our current recruitment processes:

Look for people who trust the Company, who are willing, and who want to board this adventure with you.

Have culture ambassadors of your Company and try to bring people who are able to make a living out of this culture, adding and contributing to it.

Look for above the average professionals to work at your Company. This will only attract and keep other above the average professionals, who will also want to work on this same project.

To ensure we’re hiring people with the most appropriate profile (technical, behavioral, and cultural) for each position, we follow these steps in recruitment:

Step 1: Summarize your skills!

Here, we get lots of CVs from different sources we use and carefully go through each one, looking for the first necessary characteristics and knowledge for each specific position.

Step 2: Let’s chat?

After we select a few CVs, we get in touch with the candidate to better understand their professional moment and schedule a meet at our office! :) This is a good opportunity to introduce our workplace, talk more about the departments, routines proposed for the new Trooper we’re looking for… If the candidate is not in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, we schedule a first chat via Skype and in the next stages they can tour one of our offices!

Step 3: We’d like to know how you work!

On this stage of the selection process, we’ll propose solving a task, which will give the candidate a more practical look at the routine of the position open. So, they’ll be able to demonstrate their skills and reasoning, getting closer to becoming a HotTrooper! For coders, there’s an extra challenge, which definitely makes the recruitment process more dynamic!

Step 4: What makes you special?

For us, a person who fits our pillars, values, and mantras is essential! On this stage, we’ll be entirely focused on knowing the candidates’ highlights through a psychological assessment and another chat, but now dedicated to how the candidate sees the world!

Step 5: Are you coming with us?

We’ve hit the final stage! If the candidate got up to here, they’ll get a job offer to analyze and tell us if they’re in on the challenge of becoming a Trooper. The Recruiter is always the contact point between throughout the recruitment process and will keep them updated. We know how anxious the process can make us!

Yeah, as you can see, our recruitment process is long. But it’s all for a reason! We understand the decision to join a Company should be well-assessed by the candidate, once it has a direct impact on their careers!

Throughout the process, we allow various opportunities for the candidate to familiarize themselves with the way we work, our leadership, our culture, and the requirements of the positions, being able to also assess us, and not only the other way around, as many people think.

To be light and fun, we always try to innovate the activities we propose and we try to create an incredible experience for the candidates!

A selection built with a different set of eyes and perspectives will tend to be less prone to mistakes thus being a more responsible and cohesive one.